1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer networks, and more particularly to network abstraction and isolation layer (NAIL) rules-based federation and masquerading (RBFM) that provides abstraction and/or isolation with masqueraded addresses based on transformation rules that enables servers to communicate on a shared network using unique and predictable addresses.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is desired to deploy servers in multiple groups or “federations”, where the servers of a federation work together and are able to communicate directly with one another over a common network link coupled to the federation. The applications executing on the servers typically use hard-coded IP addresses to communicate with the other servers in the federation. It is also desired to deploy multiple copies of an original federation for redundancy, scalability or for other reasons. In conventional configurations using a common network link, this raises the likelihood of a first-tier server from a first federation colliding with another first-tier server from a second federation cloned or copied from the first. One way to solve this problem is to provide a separate private network for each federation so that its member servers may communicate directly with each other without conflict with other federations. This solution adds costs in terms of additional NIC hardware and/or the consumption of virtual network resources within the virtualization platform. It is desired to avoid such additional costs.
A solution is needed that allows intra-group communication (between servers of a given federation) and that prevents inter-group communication conflicts (between servers of different federations) when all of the servers of multiple federations are coupled to the same network link.